Olivia Wilde names her four favourite movies of all time: “Really impacted me”
Olivia Wilde might have become somewhat of a controversial figure in the past few years due to alleged on-set antics, and her thriller Don’t Worry Darling might have been a bit of a sophomore slump, but there’s no denying her taste in film when it comes to her four all-time favourites.
Speaking to Letterboxd, the actor-turned-director was inevitably asked the age-old question, to which she said, “This is, like, the hardest thing to do”, playing it humble before rhyming off her favourites with ease.
“I think The Big Lebowski is my number one,” Wilde said, starting out strong. The slacker movie to end all slacker movies, there’s no denying that the Coen brothers’ The Big Lebowski, featuring Jeff Bridges as one of two Lebowskis who end up in a rather stressful mix-up, is an utter classic.
But then again, it doesn’t seem to make people’s top four as often as you’d think. Maybe the real auteurs see it as too pedestrian, and Wilde doesn’t say much more on the matter, because really, it needs no introduction. Actually, she doesn’t give much information for most of her list, even for the most obscure pick: Tampopo.
Dubbed the first ‘noodle western’, Tampopo is a delectable Japanese film directed by Juzo Itami that follows a duo of truck drivers-cum-cowboys who advise a struggling ramen chef on how to make her restaurant into a “paragon of noodle soup making”. It’s weird, it’s sexy, it’s visually beautiful, and it’ll make you crave a big bowl of noodles like nothing else. No notes for Wilde on this one; it’s a stone-cold masterpiece.
Sadly, her next choice isn’t all that interesting. Stuck between two films, she ended up choosing Quentin Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction over Wes Anderson’s The Royal Tenenbaums. Sure, they’re both fine works of art, but at this point, they’re a little overrated. Maybe that’s easy to say now that Tarantino seems to have fully fallen into disrepute due to his consistent icky behaviour. Then again, there’s no denying the power of Samuel L Jackson, John Travolta and Uma Thurman.
It’s her final pick, however, that actually seems to be the one that she holds closest to her heart, especially if we consider the kind of work she produces. “The Virgin Suicides is the first film that really impacted me from Sofia [Coppola],” she explained, before waxing lyrical about the movie. There’s no doubt that Coppola’s directorial debut has influenced countless women in film, and as Wilde points out, “her understanding of femininity is so singular”.
The Booksmart director points specifically to the “closeness, the intimacy, the complexity” of the relationships in the film as its highlight, adding, “I just don’t think you see [that] often in American cinema”. There’s no doubt that some of these things influenced Wilde when making her debut feature. After all, it’s about two young girls dealing with the stresses of teenagehood, albeit in a much less tragic and more funny way than Coppola.
Given Wilde’s most recent offering, The Invite, a couple’s comedy starring Penélope Cruz, Seth Rogen and Edward Norton, it’s no surprise most of her top picks lean towards the funny. It might be good to get a little more Coppola with it in the future, though.
Oliva Wilde’s four favourite movies:
- The Big Lebowski (Coen brothers, 1998)
- Tampopo (Juzo Itami, 1985)
- Pulp Fiction (Quentin Tarantino, 1994)
- The Virgin Suicides (Sofia Coppola, 1999)
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